"Sony has informed us they will not approve
user mods the way they should work: where users can do anything they
want for either Fallout 4 or Skyrim Special Edition," Bethesda told fans on its official blog
on Friday. "Like you, we are disappointed by Sony’s decision given the
considerable time and effort we have put into this project, and the
amount of time our fans have waited for mod support to arrive."

Only one of the technical limits mentioned in
our original report (below), about mod storage limits, is on Sony's
side, so that may very well be the sticking point that Sony refuses to
budge on. Bethesda's statement leaves room for Sony to change its tune
and enable the same kind of console-mod support that Xbox One players of
Fallout 4 are currently enjoying.

Original report: It's been more than three months since Xbox One players got the ability to load and play most player-created Fallout 4 mods,
a rarity in the console world. PlayStation 4 owners, however, are still
waiting for the same feature, seemingly owing to continuing technical
problems and issues with Sony.

PS4 modding for Fallout 4
was initially promised for some time in June, after the late May
release of Xbox One mod support. By mid-June, however, Bethesda admitted to
running into problems with memory and performance issues on the
console, struggles with the PS4's proprietary sound file format, and a
Sony-imposed mod storage limit of 900 MB (compared to a full 2GB on the
Xbox One). Despite all that, a closed beta for PS4 modding was
reportedly "close to ready" at the time.

It wasn't until the end of June that Bethesda officially delayed that beta indefinitely. By early August, Bethesda could only say that it was "working with Sony on Fallout 4 Mod support for PS4" and that "the process [for adding PS4 mods] is still under evaluation."

In a new interview with the UK's Metro
newspaper, Bethesda's Pete Hines confirmed that the feature has not
been abandoned despite the long delay and radio silence from the
company. "It’s definitely not that we’ve decided not to do it; we
absolutely, positively want to get PS4 mods out as fast as humanly
possible."

When given the opportunity, Hines refused to
point the finger directly at Sony for the continuing delays, simply
repeating again that the feature is "undergoing an evaluation process."
But Hines has previously hinted that external forces are preventing him
from sharing the full story behind the wait. In July, he tweeted that
Bethesda was waiting for an update it could share with its fans. Asked
in a follow-up why Bethesda was hurting its credibility by "keeping
players in the dark," Hines replied, "I don't disagree. We have explained that to 'others' so we can get/share an update. So far it hasn't worked."

Bethesda's apparent struggles with Sony come as a number of developers have named Sony as the sole barrier to setting up cross-platform gameplay
between the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. "Right now, we're literally at
the point where all we need is the go-ahead on the Sony side and we can,
in less than a business day, turn [cross-platform play] on and have it
up and working, no problem," Psyonix Vice President Jeremy Dunham said
in July.